Tropical forests alone hold more than 210 gigatons of carbon, seven times the amount emitted each year by human activities. A. Christy Williams / WWF-Canon

Better Use of Forests, Food and Land Can Deliver 30 Percent of Climate Solutions by 2030

As part of the Global Climate Action Summit, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), together with a broad coalition of partners, on Monday issued the 30X30 Forests, Food and Land Challenge: calling on businesses, states, city and local governments, and global citizens to take action for better forest and habitat conservation, food production and consumption, and land use, working together across all sectors of the economy to deliver up to 30 percent of the climate solutions needed by 2030.

Hosted in San Francisco from September 12-14, the Summit will bring together thousands of people from around the world to drive ambition to the next level. It will be a moment to recognize the extraordinary achievements of states, regions, cities, companies, investors, and citizens taking climate action and to catalyze bold new commitments and action.

Collectively, the global food system, unsustainable forest management, infrastructure development, and other activities related to land use are a major driver of global climate change, accounting for more greenhouse gas emissions than the total emissions from all cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships in the world. Forests, grasslands, and other habitats pull carbon out of the atmosphere, but when they are cleared, they release carbon and their capacity to reabsorb it is diminished. In the soil and in healthy ecosystems, carbon is a building block of life; in the atmosphere, it heats the planet.

"To curb climate change, we must address the second-greatest source of emissions: our use of land," said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, head of WWF's global climate and energy practice."By taking concrete action, businesses and local leaders also can encourage national governments to more aggressively reduce carbon emissions using every resource available, including trees, grasses and soil."

California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., a summit co-chair, recently underlined the actions California is taking to deal with forest losses. Forests serve as the state's largest land-based carbon sink, drawing carbon from the atmosphere, but even a single wildfire can quickly undermine those benefits.

"Devastating forest fires are a profound challenge to California," Governor Brown said recently when issuing a sweeping executive order to increase the ability of forests to capture carbon. "I intend to mobilize the resources of the state to protect our forests and ensure they absorb carbon to the maximum degree."

"Climate change is already disrupting and destabilizing our global food and agricultural systems," said Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever. "By eliminating habitat loss and degradation from our supply chains, we can prevent the emission of billions of tons of greenhouse gases. Businesses like ours have a responsibility and an opportunity to help the nations of the world meet and exceed the goals of the Paris Agreement."

Businesses, state and local agencies, multilateral organizations, scientists, and other stakeholders can meet this challenge by taking concrete action to:

Halve food loss and waste and consume conscientiously.

Sequester one gigaton of carbon per year in forests and other natural and working lands.

Enable better production of food and fiber by unlocking finance, providing tools to increase transparency, fostering public-private collaboration and protecting local rights.

Because Indigenous Peoples and local communities are among the most effective guardians of natural habitats and most directly harmed by the loss and degradation of forests and waterways, engaging and protecting these constituencies and their tenure rights will be critical to meeting the 30X30 Challenge.

"Given the large but unrecognized contributions indigenous peoples are making by protecting huge areas of the world's forests, we are central to the climate solution," said Cándido Mezua, an Embera leader from Panama and secretary for international relations for the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests. "Governments and the private sector should embrace our approach to sustainable development, partner with us in the planning, and allow us to share in the prosperity that results."

How could anyone shoot a dolphin? A dolphin that washed up dead in Manhattan Beach, California died from a bullet wound, according to local animal rescue workers.

Earlier this month, Peter Wallerstein, the founder of Marine Animal Rescue, responded to a call about a stranded dolphin on the surf, according to NBC News. By the time he arrived at the scene, the marine mammal was dead.

We adopted Amelia as a young turkey into our sanctuary from a local farmer. She lived with us for five years until her legs gave out, and we had to call our veterinarian to put her to rest, surrounded by her friends in the yard. Until then she hung out happily with the chickens and ducks, and when people visited, she'd fan out her white tail feathers and stroll amiably beside them.

Americans celebrate the winter holidays in many ways, which typically include an abundance of food, drinks, desserts—and waste. Food waste is receiving increasing attention from managers, activists, policymakers and scholars, who call it a global social problem. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, wealthy nations waste nearly as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Efforts to reduce food waste tend to focus on consumption practices, with less attention to the production and distribution side. But according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a large proportion of food loss and waste in the U.S. occurs at the farm-to-retail level, with about 133 billion pounds of food available at retailers going uneaten.

An estimated 250,000 liters (66,000 gallons) of
crude spilled from the SeaRose FPSO, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, in the White Rose oil and gas field off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Husky Energy, the operator responsible, said the spill happened on Friday when the SeaRose FPSO "experienced a loss of pressure" in an oil flowline, according to the Canadian Press.

On Saturday, More than 6,000 climate activists shut down five bridges in Central London. The protest, organized under the banner of Extinction Rebellion to call for urgent action on climate change, was the first to intentionally block the bridges "in living memory," the group reported.